To feel robbed by love holidays

[Chloefairydust]

So in May me and my partner booked a holiday with love holidays, regrettably. Their customer service is non existent. They cancelled our flights after we had already paid for them, and never rebooked flights. We couldn’t contact them to reorganise our flights, so we ended up having to organise our own flights thinking we could get a partial refund on the holiday as obviously they never organised our flights. However there’s no way of getting in touch with them and they basically owe us £1400 . I have come to accept I’m never going to see that money again. Just wondering if anyone else has had the same experience?

I was looking for airline reference numbers that I could maybe use to phone up the airlines but they don’t appear to have supplied any

This sounds exactly like OntheBeach (an equally terrible experience) where they book your flights using their own references and don't share them with you ... and they're impossible to contact too

What the hell is it with these companies who simply won't talk to us, even in circumstances when you'd reasonable expect to? It almost makes me wish for the old days of high street travel agents, where at least you could deal with a real live person

“almost makes me wish for the old days of high street travel agents, where at least you could deal with a real live person”

But only almost.

You get what you pay for, and people didn’t want to pay for that.

Yup. They are still around

You're quite right, Testina, but even with online booking "companies" it wasn't always like this

Certainly less money means less service, but not to be able to contact them AT ALL seems to me beyond ridiculous

Here’s a few screen shots of my partner trying desperately to get love holidays to organise our flights…. There was many many many more but I don’t want to spam the whole thread with them.

You can actually see in one of those they completely ignored my partner and actually closed the conversation… 😮

And yes I miss high street travel agents , companies like this can definitely hide behind these messaging apps and just ignore you. Even to be able to talk to someone in person on the phone would be more helpful.

Yeah, that's shite.
I was just checking you actually booked with Love holiday not You love holidays😂

Again, high street agents still exist.

Testina also I followed that link and search love holidays and they are listed on ATOL. However when you go to the actual form the drop down menu doesn’t have love holidays or their ATOL number. So it seems to be impossible to file a ATOL claim against them… Has anyone ever made an ATOL claim here?

You say earlier in the thread that the airline told you that your flights were cancelled. Then that you never had any comms from them…

Anyway, a key detail here will be whether the alternate flights you were offered were within the allowable guidelines. Did you check that?
If you did, and they aren’t, you’ll be able to take action to recover that money, but you’ll need all of your proof, not just the chats. You’ll also need to show that you made an effort to resolve this directly before starting small claims, including the official complaint procedure. Did you do that?

No it wasn’t the airline that told us, it was love holidays, all communication was through them, we didn’t even get given an airline reference number for the flights they later cancelled.

The flight they offered that was completely unacceptable was never even booked. The flights were never purchased. So love holidays still had the money. At one point my partner found flights that took him about 10 minutes and he messaged them the flights to try to help them out and we just didn’t hear anything back. And we complained through the phone when it was within the week of our booking which didn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t find any other contact info for them. But partner will be emailing CEO tonight and then if there’s no response which knowing how shite love holidays are I’m willing to bet there won’t be. I will look into small claims.

Just wish I could figure out how to claim through ATOL , I mean what is the point in having that certificate if you can’t even make a claim against love holidays… It’s so wierd

OP, when was the holiday? You mentioned May early in the thread - was this when your holiday was?
If so, what have you done to solve this since then?

Holiday was paid for in February, and then the actual holiday was in May. It was very stressful in the lead up to the holiday, I suffer anxiety too so it don’t help. Then during and after the holiday there was attempts to get in touch with love holidays and there is literally no way to contact them. The first day of your holiday the reference number they give you no longer works. You can’t get through to any human on the phone just an automated message that takes your reference and only lets you talk to a rep a week before your holiday. Any other time and after the holiday, that number blocks you from speaking to anyone. The option of live chat is also gone. They shut off all communication. Literally the only way to contact them would be to book and pay for another holiday, which we will never be doing with them ever again.

So you haven't spoken with them by any means since before your holiday.

As I suggested earlier in the thread, I think you should gather all of the facts in bullet points then email one or more of the addresses given by other posters upthread (ceo etc).
You've left it very long to seek resolution. Which weakens your case.

You need to be proactive now.

we tried but they close all communication after the holiday. Partner is sending an email tonight to CEO and I have found an address so I can write a letter. (Although apparently according to other people who have had issues with love holidays they don’t reply to letters) . But I will try.

I wish I had dealt with it sooner, I think my anxiety was just so bad with it all I didn’t have the energy to fight it. And my partner was just too angry to deal with it. Now we have calmed down enough for some clarity over the situation we will try again.

It’s so bad though that the only way we have to contact them is by posting a letter or sending an email, both of which are likely to be ignored.

Like why can’t they have a customer helpline phone number like every other company in the 21st century has.

I booked with them this year after I saw a Mumsnet thread saying they were OK. Everything was fine apart from having to search for contact phone numbers. I would definitely use them again. The flight we chose (convenient airport and time of day) wasn’t available through other companies. I’m sure you’ll be able to resolve this but to be honest, so far you seem to just want to keep saying they’re a terrible company and they’ve stolen your money.

You said “And then as soon as your holiday starts the reference number doesn’t work and you can’t get in touch with anyone. The live chat portal closes too. Like imagine if there was an emergency on holiday and we needed their help. They are just such a bad company.”
I’ve attached a screenshot from my own booking confirmation with them. They do give you a contact number for when you’re on holiday.

It sounds like you’ve been unlucky with the changed flights, but your partner should have been more careful about keeping emails, including the important one that has your booking confirmation attached, and noting details. The booking confirmation shows the flights, as a PP showed with a screenshot. LH can’t have been “vague” about the original flights, the flight numbers are right there in the booking and you can find out the airline from the flight numbers.

Earlier in the year when a lot of flights were being cancelled, a lot of people were contacting LH on Twitter and were getting replies. Sometimes it took a while but they did reply.

I’m sure that if you contact the airline with your names, the flight numbers and the dates you were meant to be flying, they’ll be able to find the original booking even though it was made via LH.

My problem was caused by me entering my email address wrongly when I booked so I didn’t get the confirmation. Once I found the right number they sorted it out immediately.

These are the numbers I found when I couldn’t contact them (because I hadn’t received the email confirmation due to having given the wrong address):

0208 175 1145 (this worked- you get round the automated system by saying it’s a new booking)
01234 675745
0203 870 6830 (in resort)
01202 125667 (this is the collections number IIRC, I bet they answer that one!)

Yeah they supplied the flight number and times, but didn’t give us any airline reference numbers.

And thanks for the numbers, we will give them all a try

So your partner didn’t get something like this in the PDF document attached to the booking confirmation email?
Even without a flight ref number I’m sure it’s possible for the airline to find your cancelled flight if you tell them the flight number (not reference number or booking number), the dates of the cancelled flights and your names, even though it was LH who booked the flights for you.

BTW you can’t make an ATOL claim, that’s only for when the company has ceased trading. LH is still trading which is why you can’t find them on the ATOL web site.

No we didn’t get given the airline reference numbers.

And I totally misunderstood the kind of protection ATOL gives in that case

I do think the airline should be able to find the cancelled booking from the flight number and your name and the date, if you explain to them that you don’t have the ref number.
The CAA website is very clear about what ATOL is for. It’s to protect travellers when the company has gone under, especially those stranded abroad. https://www.caa.co.uk/atol-protection/make-an-atol-claim/making-an-atol-claim/ I think a few people here have misunderstood that.

I know someone asked this before, and I can't see an answer - why haven't you claimed through your travel insurance?

If you have a flight number, you can tell the airline. Share it here - we’ll tell you. Though you can Google it yourself.